Dream Walker
by Sparrow Moon
Summary: When he's evacuated from London, to stay alone in the strange mansion of Professor Diggory Kirke, the lines between Edmund Pevensie's dreams and reality begin to blur.
1. Prologue

_Dear Mummy,_

_I have just gotten to the Professor's house and I have written you a leter like you wanted me too. I have not gone to bed yet because there is not a bedtime here and I don't like the bed because it has sheets which are scrachy. This house is very big and I think that if I shouted in the hall then it would eco but I am not alowed to shout because there is a cross lady called missus Mcreedy who says I am not alowed to disturb the professor. There are not any other children had been evacyouated here as well, the people were all saying that there was not enouf places for the children but I am glad you did not make me get evacyouated with the peoples from school because I do not like them very much. There is lots of outside things here and about a hundred million trees which might be good for climbing but I think mrs mcreedy/mcmeany! would yell if I got dirty because she doesnt seem to like me much. I do not want to go to bed. And the bed is very scratchy. I am going to take this letter down to the maids who said they would make sure that it would get taken down to the post office in the morning so you would no I go here safe because the train trip was very boring which is a shame because trains are very eciyting. When will I get to come home mummy?_

_Lot's of love_

_Edmund Pevensie_

_Age 10 and one half_

_Coom Holt_


	2. Chapter 1

It had been dark quite a while before Edmund Pevensie finally found himself feeling tired enough to get into his bed. This was not because Edmund was a bad child or because he was being difficult but because, like a lot of young children, he found it very difficult to get comfortable when alone in an unfamiliar place. Although writing a letter to his mother had comforted him for a while, he was now feeling very lonely. It didn't help that he tended to get rather fidgety and the bed he was sleeping in had rather coarse sheets which made sitting between them distinctly uncomfortable. Every time he shifted he wondered if maybe having somebody else there (even somebody from _school_) might have been nice because at least then he would have somebody to share in his misery.

He fought the urge to just get out of the bed and sleep on the floor (anything was better than those horrible sheets) because he didn't want to wake up in the morning with a sore neck from not really resting it or a sore nose if he slept on his front against the unforgiving wood.

Shutting his eyes and laying still felt more like fighting than relaxing. He wanted to be at home. Bother the bombs and the war, if he could just be at home with his own bed and his own sheets and his mum… His fingernails were digging into his palms so hard it was a miracle they didn't bleed.

He clenched his eyes shut and absolutely didn't cry. He was ten and a half and that was far too old to cry. Daddy had asked him to be big for mummy and even if mummy wasn't here anymore didn't mean he could be a baby.

It's hard to judge how long he lay like that, fighting back his feelings, but finally, exhausted and shaking, he sank into sleep.

His eyes snapped open and he launched himself up into a sitting position, damp and freezing. He hadn't made much effort to familiarise himself with the room he'd been staying with at the Professor's but _this_ quite blatantly wasn't that room.

He stumbled to his feet, wiping the powdery snow from his front as he looked around. He was in a wood. He hadn't seen many woods in his life apart from the one by the Professor's house – he'd grown up in London and the two times he'd been on holiday they'd visited the sea – but he was quite clearly in a small clearing in a large forest. More alarmingly – it was winter. Geography had never been a subject the Edmund was particularly good at but even he knew that there was nowhere in England that could be having different seasons to where he'd been staying.

He shivered. The idea of going to sleep in his dressing gown and slippers sounded rather silly, but standing barefoot nearly knee deep in snow and with the back of his nightclothes completely drenched from being on the ground, he decided that he rather wished he had done.

"H-hello?"

His voice sounded as small as he felt among the enormous trees and he knew instantly that nobody was likely to have heard it. He looked around him, examining his surroundings like the heroes in the adventure stories he read when he couldn't get hold of detective ones and looked for something (anything) which might be useful.

He seemed to be in a clearing with most of the trees around him tightly packed despite the fact he stood in empty space. There was room to walk between the trees but only in certain directions and there were no clear paths or roads. If anybody had passed through the area the slowly falling snow had long since completely smothered their tracks.

A more timid boy than Edmund might have chosen that moment to sit down and cry, but Edmund, who from a very young age could be counted on to be more stubborn than scared, had read enough of the right sort of books to know that exploring was almost always a better idea than waiting for a rescue, and enough of the boring sort for words like 'frostbite' and 'hypothermia' to nag at the edges of his mind.

Going through the dark woods was slow progress but after ten minutes or so he spotted a light glowing dimly from between the trees and, being far to cold to be suspicious, set his course for it. By this time his hands and face had gone quite numb with cold and his feet felt like completely separate entities to the rest of his body. The rest of him was stinging with cold by the time he dragged himself, snow covered and with frost forming on his cheeks (which had been flushed with cold when he first woke up in the woods but were now quite pale), into the clearing from which the light shone.

He wilted upon seeing it. It was not, as he had hoped, a building or a settlement but a lonely iron lamppost. All the willpower in the world couldn't have stopped him from sagging with disappointment and dropping to his knees. He was so cold it didn't really matter if he was in or out of the snow anymore.

"I say!"

Edmund glanced up, hope bubbling in him again, only to catch sight of something that he had always been told existed only in storybooks.


	3. Chapter 2

The creature (Edmund couldn't remember for the life of him what creatures of that sort were called) hurried over to him and immediately lifted him to his feet – muttering in a worried sort of way.

"W-wh-what a-are you?"

"My name is Tumnus," said the creature, "Can you walk?"

Edmund nodded shakily, "B-but _what _are you?"

"A faun of course. But what are _you_?" the creature shot him a curious look before shaking its (his? The creature seemed very masculine) head "Not to worry, once you get warmed up you'll be as right as ever."

The creature, (the faun, Edmund corrected) seemed to be having some difficulty balancing his umbrella, the parcels he was carrying, and Edmund all at once, but after a minute or two he seemed to have figured it out and began leading Edmund off into the forest somewhere.

A small part of Edmund's brain was objecting quite wildly to this – his mother having spent hours drilling into him that he must never go off with strangers – but the larger part of him was cold and, consequently, compliant.

The journey to the house of the faun was mostly a blur for Edmund as was his initial arrival. In fact, several hours might have passed before, wrapped in blankets and sitting in front of the faun's fire, he really began to regain any sense of self. The faun makes him toast and hot tea and doesn't ask questions and Edmund is oh so glad and oh so grateful because if he felt lost at the Professor's house that was nothing compared to how he felt in this strange place.

"Where are we?" he asked once he'd finally begun to get some energy back. His voice was startlingly weak and raspy.

"My house," said the faun simply and then added, "In the Lantern Waste."

"Lantern Waste?" Edmund muttered, "Odd name for a place and nowhere in England that's for sure. But you're speaking English…" then, realising how rude it was to be speculating to himself while in company, he asked, "What _country_ is this?"

The faun looked at him in surprise, "Well Narnia of course! You mean to say you don't know that?"

Edmund shook his head, feeling rather ignorant, "I'm afraid I don't know where Narnia is either Mr… Tumnus?"

The faun shot him a surprised look. "Well I've never been very good at geography…"

"Neither am I," Edmund cut in (momentarily forgetting his manners), "I can't remember how long any of the rivers are or how big any mountains are or anything

The faun looked at him strangely and Edmund felt a rush of embarrassment. "Anyway," the faun continued, "As I asked in the wood, what are you? Some sort of beardless dwarf?"

Edmund bit back a snort, "I'm a boy," then for clarifications sake, "A human boy. My name is Edmund."

"Good, good," muttered the faun, suddenly seeming rather distracted.

"Erm, Mr Tumnus? Do you know anybody who might be able to help me get back to England?" Edmund said, suddenly fearing that the faun would not.

The faun frowned for several moments and then said, "There are only a few people in the Lantern Waste who might know a bit about geography…"

Edmund paled, biting down on his lip, and the faun hurriedly added, "But I'm sure that we can find somebody, even if they aren't a local!"

Edmund, who was young not stupid, suspected that the faun was only saying this to keep him calm, in the same way that people back home kept telling him that the war would be over soon even though they'd been saying that since what felt like forever ago. He didn't say anything though, his sharp tongue was overruled by his sharp mind which warned him that being difficult or disagreeable when lost in a strange land with no shoes and no way of getting home was a decidedly bad idea.

Instead of being difficult Edmund pulled the blankets tighter around him and stared at the fire – it reminded him of the bombs that had fallen all around his hometown and his mother. He wondered what nasty Mrs Macready would say when she sent a maid to wake him only to discover he was missing. Would she think _that_ was worth disturbing the professor for? Edmund rather suspected she wouldn't. Honestly, he'd known he'd be better of staying in the city instead of being sent off to the boring old countryside where he would have to sleep in scratchy sheets and wake up in strange forests.

The faun pottered about his business happily and occasionally played a few songs on an odd little flute and when Edmund asked about going home Tumnus told him that he would really have to wait because it was getting late and the weather was particularly bad that day but it would all be okay because they could sort it out in the morning when Edmund was warm and well rested.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed before he began to get the strangest feeling of being shaken.

"What? What's that?" he groaned, for he had almost been asleep in front of the fire by that time, and the faun turned to look at him, first with alarm and then with a horrified sort of shock. Before Edmund could ask the faun what had spooked him however, he felt the most tremendously strange tingle go through him and before he knew it he was laid flat on his back in his bed at the Professor's with a maid shaking him awake for breakfast.


	4. Chapter 3

He was glad, he decided, that the faun and the forest were all just a rather peculiar dream. He does not ever want to be that cold again. All the same, as he gazed out of the window of the library, a dictionary open in his lap only for the look of things, he can't help but feel that at least being in the wood had not been dull. The Professor's house was big and his garden was even bigger but even if the weather outside had been nice it wouldn't have done much for Edmund for the Professor's house is also far removed from anywhere and there are no other children he can play with – Mrs Macready's is childless and old anyway and the maids are all too young to have children and unmarried anyway. School had taught Edmund that other children were quite unpleasant and often bullies but growing up an only child meant that Edmund knew better than most how impossibly dull it was to create games on your own.

He turned a page in the dictionary and wondered why anybody would ever need to use a word like gastro-vascular when there surely must be a simpler way of saying it. He supposed it might be a good way to confuse people and, with that in mind, he finally had an idea that might keep him from dying of boredom for a few hours. (He hopes he won't die of boredom because then being evacuated will have been a complete waste of time.)

It took him two and a half hours of crossing out all of the words in the dictionary which confuse him to get to the letter J by which point he realised that he had lost all interest in the exercise and even the notion of it essentially being mindless vandalism of something which annoys him fails to restore him.

He suspected that he would have gone mad by the end of the week.

He went back to his room and looks out of the window there, and then he goes back to the library window and compares the views. Once he's done with that he goes to the window in the hallway and sees if he can spot anything else from there. He spotted a radio in his room when he finally goes back to it after eating lunch all alone and it was quite possibly the best thing he has seen all day because the house is far to quiet and even though he knows it will probably just be news and other boring things it cannot be any worse than the quiet which is making it far too tempting to break Mrs Macready's rules and just scream to make sure that it isn't his ears being broken which makes it seem so silent.

When night falls and he can slip between the scratchy sheets and shut his eyes it is almost a relief. He still finds it hard to fall asleep. He is a young boy and he's used to moving about and doing things with his time and sitting in this house trying to be quiet and out of the way doesn't use up enough of his energy to make him tired at bedtime.

He put his slippers on before he went to bed and his dressing gown to even if he knows sleeping in them is more than a little silly. He knows that the forest was just a dream and it is over but the memory of the chill still rests in the forefront of his mind and it can't hurt him to be careful.

He is decidedly glad of this silly bit of caution when he wakes up in the middle of the faun's living room and his dressing gown and slippers are still on.

"Bother!"

The faun spun around and stared at him in disbelief.

Edmund shot the faun an apologetic look. "I'm sorry to intrude?"

"How in Aslan's name…?"

Edmund had a feeling he knew what the faun was talking about. "I don't know how I got here. It's just like last night. I fell asleep just the same as I've been doing all my life and then I woke up here. I thought I was dreaming when I woke up after last time…"

The faun looked thoughtful for a few moments. "I had wondered…"

Edmund shrugged. "Perhaps I'm just dreaming. I mean snowy forests and fauns and a place called… what did you call this place again?"

The faun frowned. "The Lantern Waste of Narnia. And don't be silly. I'm most certainly not a dream."

"Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. It's not like there's a lot I can do about it. I hope I get a more normal dream tomorrow though. I'm not normally this aware of my dreams and this is all a bit strange anyway – especially two nights in a row."

In all honestly Edmund was no where near as calm or knowledgeable as he was trying to act. He didn't know where he was or what he was doing there and it wasn't at all like his regular dreams and that made him think that maybe it wasn't at dream at all. He could never remember having a dream when he was as baffled as to what was going on as he was now. It didn't seem very likely that _he_ would be dreaming of a rather unhelpful faun.

"Perhaps you could try waking yourself up?" the faun suggested.

Edmund frowned. "I don't think I know. I usually get woken up by somebody else or wake up when I'm not tired anymore." He doesn't mention nightmares – they don't count.

It's very hard not to feel silly, talking to a faun in a cave about waking up from a dream you're having, and Edmund didn't like feeling silly so he scowled as the faun seemed to contemplate the situation.

After several moments of thought the faun offered him a cup of tea. Edmund declined and rolled his eyes the moment the faun's back was turned. He was in a cave in strange forest in a strange country with a mythical creature.

When he thought of it that way his situation sounded quite good.

"I think I'll just let things happen," he announced to the faun, "And if I dream this again tomorrow night then I shall believe you that it is real but for now I think I should just make the best of it."

It didn't sound anywhere near as clever or adventurous outside of his head as it had done in it and he was quite disappointed by that. He really wanted his dream-adventure to be something spectacular but he was so confused by it all he just ended up feeling ridiculous.

He stood up from the armchair and looked around. As much as he wanted to insist that it couldn't possibly be real he also couldn't help notice that the faun's living room seemed far clearer and more detailed than was normal for a dream and while he thought that the idea of him being mysteriously transported to another land in the night only to be transported back when he awoke was utterly illogical he didn't want to dismiss it.

He wasn't going to encourage the faun either. After all, the whole situation was rather daft.

"So this place… Narnia? Are fauns _normal_ here?"

"Well of course," said the faun, "Why wouldn't they be?"

"Well where I come from fauns are just something you read about in story books – not something real," Edmund explained, "I don't suppose there is anything else unusual that I ought to know about?"

The faun looked thoughtful for several moments, "Well I've heard that in some lands the idea that Narnia's beasts are not all dumb is considered surprising but really there is nothing unusual about the idea of talking beasts."

"Talking beasts? As in Animals? Speaking English?"

"Of course… they," the faun began but Edmund cut him off with a shake of his head.

"We definitely _don't _have those in England."

The faun looked as surprised of the notion of not having talking animals as Edmund was by the idea of having them. Still as he was partially sure that he was dreaming (and had read plenty of stories where animals could talk) Edmund was not as surprised by this revelation as he would have been under normal circumstances.

"Tell me more," Edmund implored, unable to keep the excitement from building in his stomach, "Tell me everything you know about that might be suprising or interesting to somebody who isn't from here. Do plants talk too?"


	5. Chapter 4

When he awoke the next morning Edmund was pulsing with excitement.

No, that isn't technically accurate. When he first awoke he was irritable and sulky as he always was in a morning. However once he had dressed and eaten his breakfast he was giddy with anticipation. If he dreamed of the faun in the forest again then he had decided that he would agree with the faun that he was real and the faun had agreed to see about taking Edmund to see some friends of his who lived in the area and might be able to tell Edmund more interesting things and were _beavers!_

When he had eaten his breakfast he spent an hour in the library scouring an atlas for any mention of the country of Narnia but there was, as his instincts had him suspecting, no mention.

Edmund spared no thought for rationality or the fact he had told the faun that he would almost certainly not return to 'Narnia' because, as a person sometimes does, he knew in his very _bones _that the strange land was, in its own way, real and that he would return to it.

He was also going to explore it. It wasn't that he disliked the faun's cave but to Edmund, stuck alone in the large quiet mansion for who knows how long, it was a potential adventure. If there really was a magic land he could visit in his dreams it was definitely a good thing because his days were certainly not all that great. The 'dreams' (it was funny how fast he'd begun to doubt that they were normal dreams) were something to look forward too – although he wasn't entirely sure about how fun going to sleep in his clothes and shoes would be.

But still – having a funny little dream world to look forward to did seem to make his day run far smoother. Instead of defacing dictionaries he rummaged through the library shelves until he found a book on mythology which gave descriptions of all sorts of interesting creatures like fauns and dryads and naiads which weren't exactly how Mr Tumnus had described them were very interesting, along with the descriptions of things Mr Tumnus hadn't mentioned like ogres and Minotaurs and trolls.

To Edmund's complete surprise, when he was called for lunch, he didn't want to leave. He went down and ate of course, no amount of things to think about would rid him of the appetite of a growing boy, but all the time his mind was caught up in 'Narnia' and magic and all of the things he might 'dream' of. He was decidedly pleased that there were books on similar subjects in the library for it there hadn't been he feared that he might have spent all of the day waiting to fall asleep again.

Once he had eaten, instead of returning to the books, he went back to his room and began to search through his things for some clothes that might be suitable to wear when walking through the snowy woods to meet Mr Tumnus' neighbours. It was harder than one would have expected. Although it was September and getting chillier by the day as autumn crept in the only long trousers Edmund owned which were not nightclothes were his best. Instead he laid out his thickest and longest socks, one of his warmer shirts, the coat his mother had made from the blackout material and his sturdiest shoes (loath as he was to have to try and fall asleep in them). All in all, considering how Mrs Macready had frowned at his lack of luggage, he felt he'd pulled something together well. His father would be proud of him, his mother always said finding smart clothes despite the rationing was helping the war effort.

Having decided upon suitable adventuring wear (he neglected his cap on the grounds that it would never stay on his head while he was sleeping) he packed it back up at the top of his case and went out into the garden. Exploring there would be good practise and doing something other than sitting about might help him to use up enough energy to fall asleep faster.

As much as he would never admit it to himself, Edmund's explorations made him feel even lonelier than he had done before because he couldn't help but look for the sort of places he would have been able to play games had he a fellow to explore with. Cricket was a grand way to spend an afternoon (or even a whole day if one broke for lunch) and there were several spots which would have made excellent locations for play (although the best was located dangerously close to the house and a rather fancy stained glass window) had he only some company to play it with. Even a _girl_(who would likely not want to play cricket) would have made good company at this point, he was only on his third day there and already he was eagerly awaiting his dreams if only to have somebody other than the maids to talk to.

Just to be difficult (and because he really didn't like rules except for ones which actually did some good) he started to whistle. Almost immediately one of the maids appeared with a basket of laundry and shushed him – reminding him that the rules were to be quiet and not make a nuisance of himself. As soon as she was out of earshot he started up again.

He spent the rest of the afternoon in a fit of merry defiance, climbing trees and whistling and planning how amazing his dream would be. At tea even one of the maids (not the one who caught him whistling) noticed that he was in a better temper and while he didn't fall asleep as quickly as he liked (giddy with excitement as he was and dressed in clothes not designed for sleeping in) it was with a heart full of hope he finally drifted off.


	6. Chapter 5

**A/N. My apologies for the delay in an update but moving up a key stage at school and other real life elements completely pushed this story from my mind and it only really came back to me after seeing the VDT movie and LWW being on the BBC. At which point I discovered that I couldn't remember the username, e-mail or password I used for this story. On the plus side, I am now supremely confident that no non-humans will be accessing my account any time soon. I'll say now that I'm not going to make any promises about my next update, my writing time is limited, but this fic _hasn't _been abandoned and there _will _be updates.**

He felt a surge of relief upon waking in the dream world, for a part of him had feared that he would not, and immediately looked around for Tumnus, clearing his throat to attract the faun's attention. The faun looked glad to see him but also a little wary. Edmund suspected that the faun feared once again of being accused of being a fiction.

"I... It appears I was wrong," and the faun didn't know how much it challenged Edmund to say that, "Apparently you are... you're as real as I am."

"Well of course, we're all here as Aslan made us. Care for some tea?"

"If you don't mind," Edmund said, "I'd much rather go exploring."

The faun frowned.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm not wholly sure that's a good idea..." the faun said, "It's dangerous out there."

"But why? I thought you said Narnia was a good country."

"And indeed it is," Mr Tumnus confirmed, "But not this part."

"Why ever not?" Edmund asked, "How bad can it be?"

The faun shook his head sadly. "Very bad Edmund Pevensie, very bad indeed. For in this part of Narnia... the witch rules."

"Witch? But witches aren't..." he trailed off, supposing that if he were to believe in fauns and dwarves and dryads and talking beasts and all the rests it would probably be foolish not to believe in witches. "Perhaps," he said instead, trying to sound grown up, "You should tell me about the witch."

"Oh what's to tell," the faun said, "She's a wicked witch, keeping the western lands of Narnia under her spell and her rule. Do you know that here it is always winter and never Christmas?"

Edmund shuddered, horrified and disgusted by the notion.

"Precisely," Mr Tumnus said, "Her and her police keep any hope from reaching the lands she rules and she has a particular hatred of humans?"

"Humans? Why? And what _is_ she?"

"Nobody entirely knows but I would say that she likely has at least some giant blood in her. And as for humans... well it's as the prophecy says..." the faun looked at him expectantly but then seemed to comprehend the blank look on Edmund's face. "Right... well I can't say I know the exact words, I'd have to check with Beaver about that but I do remember that it goes something like 'Adam's flesh and Adam's bone sit in Cair Paravel at throne... the evil will be over and done."

"Throne and done? Is that supposed to be a rhyme?"

The faun shrugged, "It's rather besides the point. Anyway, the north, east and south of Narnia are free - liberated by the King and Queens but the west the witch has held for one hundred years despite all attempts. Because only three of the four thrones have been filled. Unfortunately there are no other human's with the right to take the Narnian throne, despite searches of the islands, of Archenland and even of Calormene."

"A King and _two _Queens? And they're looking for _another_ King? Seems rather a lot to me, surely the three you've got can do the job."

"Aslan knows they've tried..." the faun said, "But still the witch has her power here and as long as that is so then it cannot be safe for you to venture out."

Edmund opened his mouth to complain but then shut it firmly. Being stuck in a cave with a faun was still better than being stuck at the professor's house _alone_.

"Fair enough then. No exploring... I don't suppose you've any more stories to tell me?"

The faun smiled. "There are always stories... why I remember when I was a young faun, back before the witch came into power... we could spend days out on the dancing lawns without tiring..."

*****This-is-a-line-break.*****

This time, when Edmund awoke, he didn't spring out of the bed in a rush to get to breakfast on time. There was little to look forward to here, except from receiving a letter from his mother, and it seemed much more satisfying to lay in contemplation of his dream for a while. Or his visit, for the trips increasingly felt like more than dreams, to Narnia. He could imagine it all, in far more detail than he had ever been able to muster before in his life, all of the things the faun spoke of. The dancing and the feasting and the King and the Queens and a wonderful glorious land - and bother that witch if her tyranny meant that he would never get to see it - even the stories, never as satisfying as the real thing could be, warmed him in that always slightly chilly cave, and bolstered him in dull old England. Despite its scratchy sheets and lumpy mattress he was thankful to this bed, a surprisingly majestic thing (now he cared to look at it, it was far grander than anything he had experienced before) carved of a wood he thought might be apple, because sleeping in this bed he had found an escape. He had yet to receive a letter from his mother and was tempted to write to her and tell her about Narnia, perhaps if he had discovered it a year ago he might have done, but now he was just old enough to know that anybody he told about visiting a magical land in his dreams, even his mother, would be certain to dismiss him as mad, imagining it, or a liar. And Edmund, although he could _twist_ the truth, was loathe to give anybody reason to call him a liar.

He felt less manic as he dressed for breakfast, now he felt certain of the reality of what he had experienced and that he would return to it. He even managed to smile at the maid serving breakfast, who was rather suprised since the impression he'd given in the previous days was one of a sullen child with little interest in pleasantries. Edmund sipped orange juice and gazed out of the windows at the sprawlling grounds. If he could just forget the war and quash the little part of him that so sorely missed his mother he could almost find the countryside pleasant. He finished his meal and thought of one last little thing that would make his world complete. Good company.

But he supposed he would have Tumnus and Narnia for that.


	7. Chapter 6

Horror washed over Edmund as he gazed around the faun's cave. No... no... not this... not here. Narnia could not be spoilt as well. Tumnus has spoken of evils, yes, but not inside the cave, not in a manner which affected him.

Staring at the wreckage he realised how misplaced his security had been.

His hands shook with a discomforting combination of righteous anger and shocked fear as he took in his surroundings. A picture frame smashed, the crockery in pieces, the furnishings gouged and overturned and the cushions lacerated - somebody had come here and done this _on purpose._

He didn't spot the note immediately but when he did he lifted it and read it aloud to himself with mounting disgust.

"The former occupant of these premises, the Faun Tumnus, is under arrest and awaiting his trial on a charge of High Treason against her Imperial Majesty Jadis, Queen of Narnia, Chat- cha...tel...a...in...e...aine of Ca-ir... no that doesn't sound right... C-air, yes, Cair Paravel, Empress of the Lone Islands, etc., also of comforting her said Majesty's enemies, harbouring spies and frat...ern...izing with humans. signed MAUGRIM, Captain of the Secret Police, LONG LIVE THE - URGH!"

He threw the letter to the ground in disgust but snatched it up again within moments.

"Cair Paravel? But Mr Tumnus said that was in the east and that the witch rules only the west. So she's a liar for sure as well... and fraternising with humans? What does that even mean...? Majesty's enemies and spies? Does that mean _me_?"

Oh heavens no, the faun couldn't have been arrested just for sheltering Edmund could he? Not when he'd had no other choice. It wasn't like Edmund had done anything to make him a direct threat to the witch who styled herself Queen. Except that, as Tumnus had said, 'the witch hates humans'. How... how completely unreasonable. He had half a mind to go to the police, except that if the note anything to go by then these people _were_ the police.

This was what England would be like if the invasion came, suddenly the war back home didn't seem so much like a waste of time, not if it kept England free from this sort of tyranny.

It twisted his, well frankly Edmund wasn't sure if the feeling were best attributed to his soul or his stomach, but he was certainly ill at ease to know that he had inadvertently caused misfortune to the creature who had aided him, particularly when he could see no way in which to atone for what he had done. For all that his home was also at war, and for all the bombs that fell on London, he had never experienced anything which had shaken him as badly as this. Tumnus was gone, he was not coming back, and the only person to blame for that was Edmund. He hauled one of the faun's chairs until it was righted and sank down into it, trying to understand. He had never left the cave after the faun took him in, never could he recall acting in a way that might have lead to his capture, and nothing, nothing in his knowledge gave him any due cause to believe that the faun could be saved.

"This..." Edmund murmured, "Should not be happening." And then he steeled his nerves and corrected himself, "This will not continue."

Because for the faun to have been caught they must have done something wrong. Perhaps the faun had hosted guests during Edmund's absences, perhaps they had even been spotted on their initial trip to the cave... perhaps there was a way this could have been prevented, and could _be _prevented from recurring. And if there was, then Edmund was going to do something about it. He couldn't stay in the cave indefinitely, eventually it would be searched again, gain a new occupant, or simply become uninhabitable though the exposure to the elements the removal of the door would bring about and he didn't know any way of staying out of Narnia. So, if he had to be in Narnia, and he couldn't stay in the cave, then he would have to find a way to survive Narnia.

This time he would get it right.

Goals were nothing without an idea of how to achieve them. For Edmund, now determined to do something, anything, to make Narnia's west a safe place to live, this meant reading. The history and the geography of the nation he needed to survive in were utterly foreign, never mind knowing who his friends were. He righted the faun's table and began pulling books off of the shelves, looking for something that would help him. It was not an easy task, the books were filled with flowery words and poetry or long lines of the words he had previously whiled away hours removing from the professor's dictionary, but finally he came across a map.

Immediately he saw what he was facing. Narnia, as far as he could tell, did not have roads.

Nor did it have railways, precise borders, or, apparently, any cities. He let his head drop down onto the surface of the table in frustration. He needed a way to navigate to safety but without the structure of England, he had no idea where to start. All rational parts of his mind were suggesting that he retract on his personal promise and instead try to find a way stop these nightly visits to Narnia, but that felt far to much like quitting or loosing for him to consent to it and, whilst he did not relish the challenge, it was no worse that the challenge of finding some way of entertaining himself in that musty old house back in England.

He closed his eyes and he thought.

He thought and he thought and he thought and after what seemed like hours of wracking his brains... he was still clueless as to where to begin. He tore the map from the book, without even a shred of guilt, and, folding it in half twice, slipped it into his pocket.

He was starting too big. It was like trying to fly a fighter plane without an engine.

He needed help. He could hardly go rushing off to the Kings and Queens the faun had mentioned but there had to be somebody. Tumnus had spoken of beavers. That was as good a starting point as any. Of course, there was always the chance that they might be treacherous beavers but... Edmund was sure that Tumnus had felt the beavers trustworthy and he had little other options to pursue.

Of course he had no address for the beavers, but then again he was in a country with no roads. He pulled the map out again, scanning it. He was fairly sure, judging by the lamp-post he had seen on his first visit and his awareness that he was in the west of the country, the he was in an area called the Lantern Waste, and armed with the knowledge that beavers inhabited dams, he decided that it wouldn't be too poor of a start to begin his search on the sole river of the area.


	8. Chapter 7

There was no time like the present to take action, and Edmund couldn't think of any useful reason to wait, so he decided that he would begin his search for the beavers Tumnus had spoken of at once. He changed that thought within seconds of stepping out into the freezing winds. There would be no spreading of safety, freedom or anything else until he found a way of keeping warm. Dying of cold did not appeal in the slightest and certainly wouldn't help to achieve anything. Deciding that, under the circumstances, Mr Tumnus would probably forgive what he was about to do, he began to search again thought the Faun's possessions, this time with a far different intent. As he feared, the faun apparently didn't posses anything in the way of shirts or jumpers but Edmund did manage to locate two red knitted scarves, one more worn than the other, and a pair of mittens. Edmund had always, for as long as he could remember, loathed mittens but, scowling, he pulled them onto his hands and wrapped both of the scarves around him, letting them drape down over his shoulders and arms for extra warmth, and decided that would have to be sufficient. Tugging one of the scarves up over his mouth and nose and wrapping his arms tightly around himself he stepped tentatively out of the cave.

The wind was harsh as it slammed into his sides but fortunately, it was not against him as he staggered through the deepening snow. In the back of his mind, he felt that he should have been glad of the snow, which would be covering his tracks, but mostly he just felt cold. The snow was settling into his jacket and sinking in by the time he finally found the riverbank and began to follow it in a direction he sincerely hoped was southeast.

It was funny what desperation did to a person. Had Edmund faced such conditions in England (although he could think of no reason why he would have) he would likely have given the thing up as a bad job, or even declared it 'not his problem' from the start. However, in Narnia, with no option but to persevere, quitting didn't even cross his mind. Though his flesh had long since gone numb and his teeth were making a racket with their chattering, he knew that this was one of those problems that could only be dealt with face on. Rather like a splinter, it would not go away if one ignored it, it had to be faced up to and fixed. Even if he was left wondering if maybe, he had chosen the wrong direction to search in. His nose was running and his knees were threatening to buckle as he fought against the elements, and, were he honest with himself, the dampness on his face and salty tracks on his cheeks couldn't be blamed as entirely on the sting of the wind in his eyes as he would have liked to pretend. This was an act of madness, fuelled by a desperate need to do something, however ill advised, in favour of waiting and seeing if the situation wouldn't just pass him by – madness, but in his bones he knew also necessary.

Bother his own stubborn ways when they led him into such trouble as this.

Grumbling and squinting, he failed to notice a jutting fir root until it stole his feet from under him, and left him laying face down and drenched in snow. He took a strained breath and screwed his eyes shut, trying to find the motivation to get back up again, when a voice called out to him.

"I say lad, that's a funny place to be having a nap."

Edmund pushed himself up onto one elbow, taking a good long look at the newcomer. Had Mr Tumnus not already spoken of dwarves to him he would have been complete dumbfounded by the bearded figure in front of him. Even forewarned, he was somewhat surprised by the reality of obviously adult proportions and features on a man shorted than he was.

"C'mon. Up with yerself," the dwarf ordered, holding out a hand to him. Edmund accepted the help, pushing aside all he had learnt about not trusting strangers in England and how he knew that applied equally if not more in Narnia, for he also grudgingly accepted that he was in little state to do anything else.

"I..."

"Shush you. Not one of our sort are you, and certainly no faun or beast by the looks of you."

Edmund pulled his arm back in alarm, bracing himself to flee, but the dwarf just shook his head. "Not to worry. I shan't ask lad. But there's trouble enough in these parts without a body cluttering the place up - and I do say that you did chose a strange place to take you rest."

"I... fell," he said, trying to keep his chattering teeth under control long enough to be comprehensible."

"Pah. A nitwit. What did you fall over? Snow!" The dwarf huffed, turned, took several paces and then stumbled on the same root which had brought Edmund down.

Edmund gave a short laugh, which he quickly stifled as the dwarf whirled on him with a scowl. "Well! I haven't got all day."

Edmund gazed at the dwarf with blank incomprehension. The cold had made him a little slow and so it wasn't until the dwarf grabbed his wrist and started dragging him that he caught on.

"HEY!" He pulled back, but the dwarf was too strong, so instead he leant back so that at least he wouldn't be pulled any further forwards.

"Oh for summer's sake," the dwarf grumbled, "What's wrong now laddie?"

"Let go of me!" Edmund said, all of his lessons about not trusting strangers flashing through his mind and distracting him from answering the question.

The dwarf sighed impatiently. "Look here, you can't go wandering about the Western Wilds in a blizzard and expect not to come to harm, particularly in that get up, best you dry off and wait for the weather to calm a little before you get on your way."

Edmund frowned. He had already trusted one stranger in this land and felt that assuming another would be so helpful seemed like rather pushing his luck, but, as the dwarf had said, he wasn't in much position to do anything else. The snow was falling faster by the second and if he hadn't already lost his direction he would soon. It simply wasn't safe. But not talking to strangers was one of the most important rules he knew.

"Why should I trust you?"

The question was a compromise. The dwarf could easily lie to him but any information could be useful and he was too short on options to point blank refuse to go.

"Why should I trust you?"

"What?" Edmund cried, irritated by that dwarf's cheek, "That's not fair! I asked first."

"Life isn't fair lad. Her royal frostiness is proof enough of that."

"Still," Edmund said, trying to construct a reasonable argument (and a touch reassured at the apparent slander of the witch), "You're the one trying to lead me off I don't know where. I'd say that makes you the most suspicious one here."

"Me? Ha! Lad, you're clearly no local and you're clearly not the sort she approves of, and with you wandering about in the woods and upright subject of her rule should be calling for the secret police to have you hauled off to her place." The dwarf released his wrist. "Now you can follow or you can get even more lost than I reckon you are already. It's no difference to me. I've no use for fools."

With that firm remark, the dwarf turned and walked away. It was decision time. Always he had been told that little children should let grown-ups make decisions but right now, there was nobody to decide. He could follow the rules and go off alone or he could follow his urge to get out of the cold and trust the dwarf.

The snow was coming down thick and fast. His fingers were numb and the wing was stinging every inch of exposed flesh.

He carried on in the direction he had planned.

**A/N - Urgh. This one was such a pain to write. I was doing it in so many pieces in different places and I kept losing parts and having to rewrite them. Hopefully I've put it all together right, as at one point it was all in a document in the wrong order. As you might have observed, updates are going to slow down now that school is back in session, particularly as its exams time for me, but hopefully I'll still be able to keep on updating steadily.**


	9. Chapter 8

A part of Edmund was supremely disgusted with himself for turning down an offer to get dry and warm, and possibly all sorts of other hospitable things, but mostly he felt rather smug. And, strangely, the knowledge that he had done the _smart _thing made him feel rather less cold. Turning away from the dwarf's offer, he decided to himself, was rather like the rule about not listening to rumours and people who couldn't be trusted. There was a chance that the dwarf really would have done him a kindness, but there was also a chance that it was all a con, and when he had already been given the names of some… creatures he could trust, it would have been foolish to neglect that information in favour of wandering off on a gamble.

Anyway, now that he had found the river again he was far more confident than he had been that he was indeed heading in the correct direction, for he could see in the ice the way the water would have flowed were it still liquid.

It took him several long seconds to tug the map from his pocket and fumble it open with numb fingers but the map confirmed that the dam was indeed downstream of the faun's cave and he felt fairly sure that he'd not overshot it.

The map was roughly folded and stuffed back into his pocket as, spirits bolstered by his newfound sense of direction, he continued walking.

It was still sometime before he got to where he thought he ought to be, but finally he observed a _thing _spanning the river. Edmund had never seen a dam made of anything other than concrete before, and he eyed it warily. He had no way of knowing if this was what he was looking for. It spanned the river and, as far as he could tell, was in the right sort of area to be what he was looking for, but he could hardly go up and _knock_.

Staying behind the tree line, and hoping that they weren't the talking trees he had heard about, he observed the construction. There was smoke coming from a chimney, and lights in the windows, but the curtains were drawn against the darkness and there was no way of knowing what was happening inside. Brushing snow from his hair he glanced around. There was no bare ground or shelter where he could encamp, only the trees and the ice. His only blessing was that the snow wasn't as deep here, as the trees were limiting how much of it reached the ground.

He shouldn't go. He should be cautious. He _thought _that this was where he was supposed to be, but he didn't _know_.

Yet if he waited out here in the snow, he could easily die faster than he could find a solution to his problems.

He thought, wracking his brain to try and come up with anything which would aid him, before finally focusing his mind on a single fact. He had the element of surprise. And he was fairly sure that he was bigger than the average beaver. He scoured the area and, to his delight, spotted a large, sturdy looking stick. He picked it up; it was heavy, but not too heavy, and swung it. On his first few attempts, he swung it rather like a cricket bat, but then decided that didn't quite feel right, and lifted it higher, swinging it over and over until he felt that he could probably get in a decent hit in should he need too. Somewhat reassured by his makeshift weapon, and somewhat frustrated with the way his emotions refused to stop zigzagging between relief and fear, he approached the door. His feet slipped several times on the ice, but the fresh snow was easier to balance on and before he had a chance to second-guess himself he was standing outside of the little door.

He didn't allow himself time to lose his nerve, just raised his fist and rapped firmly on the door. The numbness in his hand made the gesture feel odd, but the sound it produced was more than sufficient.

Time seemed to slow almost to a halt as he waited there but eventually the door swung open and he was faced with what could only be a rather startled looking beaver. He was on the right track, it seemed.

"What in-"

Edmund, pushing aside his manners, cut the beaver off. "I'm Edmund. A faun called Tumnus told me that you were his friends. He's been arrested. I… this…" He trailed off weakly. He had come to the beavers because he could think of no other options.

"Tumnus? Come in come in." The beaver stepped back and waved him inside.

Instantly a wall of heat hit Edmund, as the warmth of the small dam engulfed him. He could already feel his skin beginning to thaw.

"It's alright, he's not one of her lot…" the Beaver called, and another beaver appeared from behind some shelves and looked at Edmund.

"Oh you poor dear, look at you, you're soaked right through. Come on, in front of the fire now and I'll put the kettle on while you tell us your story."

The beaver was as good as her word, (the pitch of her voice made it easy for Edmund to identify a gender) and within minutes, he was warming himself in front of the fire with a steaming mug of coffee in his hands.

"Now then, what's all this? You say Tumnus sent you?"

"Not sent, but he talked about you, said that you were his friends and that I would have liked visiting you but the witch would never allow it."

"That she wouldn't, and then he was arrested. Fraternizing with humans. You'd be the human I suppose. Nasty business that."

Edmund nodded, "And then when I got here again I couldn't think of any other place to go."

"Wait, got here _again?_ Where else would you be?"

"England," Edmund said, "That's where I'm from. It's another country. Not at all like this. Narnia isn't on any maps of our world, it's awfully strange."

"Well if that's where you're from, what are you doing here?"

"I… well I don't really know. I rather thought I was dreaming at first, when I fell asleep and woke up here, but it just keeps happening."

"Asleep? How does that work?"

"I don't know," Edmund replied, trying to keep from whining, "It just happens. I fall asleep in England and then I wake up in Narnia and then when I wake up in England I vanish back out of here. And then the next day it starts all over again, waking where I vanished from."

"Sounds," the male beaver grunted, "Awfully fishy to me."

"Oh shush dear, he's barely a child and he's lost."

"Or he's a spy."

"Or you are!" Edmund snapped, "You haven't even given me your names. If anybody here is acting fishy it's you."

"Oh how rude of us, I'm Mrs Beaver and this is my husband Mr Beaver."

"Right…" Edmund said weakly, "Mr and Mrs Beaver… that makes sense."

"As it should dear. And don't mind Mr Beaver. It's that horrid witch, making everybody nervous. He doesn't mean it."

Edmund shook his head, "It's okay. There's a war in England too, and we always get told not to trust strangers. He's really being rather sensible."

"And if you're quite done gossiping, what's to do about this human? We can hardly just keep him here. Somebody is bound to have seen him and then we'll have the witch down on our heads faster that you can say Aslan."

"Oh no! Somebody did see me! A…. a dwarf…"

Mrs Beaver gave a shocked gasp and Mr Beaver looked grim. "There aren't many dwarves around her that aren't on her side… Only Rorikin and his family… we're in trouble now. Did he know where you were going?"

"I… I didn't tell him anything. He didn't look to be following me either and the snow should cover any tracks right?"

"I don't like this one bit," Mr Beaver said grimly, "But we shall have to hope that you are right. Best stay you here for the time being, and I'll see about finding some loyal Narnians for a second opinion."

"I… I'll be back in England soon. It's been hours since I arrived here and…"

"Not to worry dear," cut in Mrs Beaver, "If your world is calling you back for a time then that's how it's supposed to be. We'll need time to think anyway."

Edmund nodded. He had a feeling it wouldn't be long before he began to hear the calls or feel the shaking. He hoped he'd just be called – he had no idea how he'd explain going to bed in his outdoor clothes to one of the maids.

**_A/N - I have a beta reader now, Lora Perry, so hopefully you guys won't have to put up with so many of my mistakes anymore._**


	10. Chapter 9

Fortunately, for Edmund, his sheets did a good job of hiding the fact the he was fully dressed when he awoke so Ivy had no knowledge of his misdemeanour to report to Mrs Macready.

He breakfasted leisurely, trying to force thoughts of Narnia from his mind. For all the countryside was boring, he wasn't foolish enough to long for the ever more apparent dangers of Narnia, particularly now that, with Mr Tumnus' arrest, he wouldn't even be reaping the benefit of interesting stories. He suspected that he wouldn't be able to avoid returning, and felt a little pained. Strangely, it wasn't the fact that he was, for all intents and purposes, trapped in Narnia every night which bothered him the most; more so, he was bothered by his powerlessness when he was there. England and the war (not to mention his age) had left him with no control over his life and now it seemed that he had even less control over his dreams than was usual, which was particularly unnerving now that his dreams had become both real and dangerous. Then there was the way that the witch's Narnia, with its network of spies and constant blanket of fear, seemed to so closely resemble what he had been warned that a post-invasion England would be like.

As such, he was in no particular mood to wander around the lonely house, so instead he made his way back to the library and began to search once again for a book that might interest him. Edmund was not a particularly gifted reader, his dislike of school limiting his progress in all academic activities, but if he was to spend however many weeks or months that the war lasted alone in this gloomy house then he was aware if would be advantageous to find some way of amusing himself.

The professor's library was large but in Edmund's opinion, not very well stocked – there were plenty of dull looking books on incomprehensible subjects, but very little that appealed to the tastes of a young boy. His footsteps were loud and echoing as he weaved through the stacks and, as before, he felt uncomfortably small, the shelves towering over his head like nothing he had ever seen in Finchley. Dragging his fingertips along the books' spines (and coating them in dust in the process) he noticed that some of the books weren't even in English; he couldn't begin to understand why anybody might want to read most of what the professor had collected.

A few books on mythology caught his eye, but he felt none of the eagerness towards them that he had felt after his initial experiences in Narnia. Time seemed to crawl as he wished for a ladder so he might scour the higher shelves in the hopes that there would be more engaging reading material there but his wish went unfulfilled and, troublesome though Edmund was known to be, he knew better than to attempt to scale the shelves. Eventually with an unnecessarily loud and pointed sigh of resignation (which was wasted upon the empty room) he selected a book on dinosaurs, and while the text itself was far too complex for him to even attempt to understand, the hours until lunch passed with only minimal frustration as he sat in the window seat and examined the illustrations. They were detailed, although colourless, and he had a suspicion that were one interested in dinosaurs, such as his aunt and uncle in Cambridge, they might have been quite fascinating.

Edmund just wished the professor could have had the sense to buy some good mystery novels.

Lunch, when it came, was a Spartan affair. And while it managed, despite the rationing, to be marginally superior to anything he had been served at school, it didn't even begin to compare to his mother's cooking and was served in nowhere near the quantities required to satisfy the appetites of a growing ten year old boy.

He was trying very hard not to think about Narnia but it was difficult to keep his mind from wandering when he was so desperately in need of amusement. The problem was that although he was scared in Narnia, and although Narnia was dangerous, it was less so than England. Although there were no bombs this far into the countryside he knew that he would only have to pick up a newspaper or turn on the radio to hear of the death and destruction that was tearing the country, tearing the world, to shreds. At least in Narnia it seemed that they had to find you before they killed you, rather than just letting horror rain from the skies. When he had been scared of confronting the Beavers he had simply picked up a sturdy stick and known that, to some extent, he would be able to defend himself. A stick would do nothing against the Luftwaffe. As he wandered the hallways, he plunged his hands grimly into his pockets and froze. His pockets _ought _to have been empty. They _weren't_.

He pulled the crumpled paper out of his pocket and gaped. It was the map. The map of _Narnia_. He hadn't brought anything back with him before, but then again he had never had anything else on him like that. He had always been empty handed and he had taken Tumnus' scarves and gloves off at the Beaver's dam to dry. But the map he hadn't even though of. It had stayed in the pocket of his English shorts and so had followed him back. That... that was odd. And absolutely irrefutable proof that Narnia was real. At least it was proof for him. If he showed it to anybody else, they would probably assume he had made the map himself.

He hurried to him room and flattened the map out across his table. The creases where his numb fingers had been unable to refold it correctly made it irksome to read so he placed a candlestick on one side and leant his elbow on the other in an attempt to hold it taught.

Any notion of pushing Narnia from his mind had been completely forgotten.

It was difficult to understand, map reading was not something taught in English schools, but Edmund had wrapped his head around the basics. Now he had the chance to examine it more closely he could see that both Tumnus' cave and the Beaver's dam had been marked on in a different set of writings to that which indicated the larger landmarks, along with several other locations in the surrounding area. He could trace approximately the route he had followed, from the lamppost to the faun's cave, and then along the river and down to the dam. Assuming the map had all been drawn on the same scale that meant that the witch's castle was less than a day's walk from the Beaver's dam. Edmund felt a sudden rush of nausea at the knowledge that if he had been seen or followed then he could quite easily arrive to find the little house already ransacked or a trap sprung and there was nothing he would be able to do. He suspected that the feeling of helplessness would never get any easier to deal with.

It was difficult to tell, at least with this particular sparsely detailed map, what Narnia might be like in the parts outside of the witch's rule, in the places that Edmund suspected he would never get the chance to see, such as the mountains at the southern border or the coast to the east. He had to admit that he thought he could rather understand why the King and Queens hadn't tried to fight the west away from the witch; it just wouldn't be practical to send an army there when the west was parted from the rest of the country by the Great River; it didn't take a tactician to see that. Still, he couldn't help but think that really they ought to make the effort anyway, or come up with some other way of fixing the issue. There had to be some way of doing it, through infiltration or through some other clever trick that they would surely know, having likely been educated on such matters.

Edmund had never considered himself a particularly proactive person, preferring to let other people do the problem solving where he could, but something about the plight of the west Narnians (and he supposed by extension himself) made him want to try and make a difference. But he was ten. Ten and scrawny and only even in Narnia when he found himself magically pulled there in his sleep, never mind that really he was completely ignorant of most of Narnia's history, geography and culture. There had to be something though. The people in England wouldn't allow themselves to be oppressed if invasion came, he was sure, and so the Narnians really just needed to show the same resolve.

He continued in this line of thought as he ate his supper and retreated to his room, his mind consumed by the slogans and tactics that the government were teaching civilians would help them win the war. There had to be something. He couldn't _fix _Narnia, but there had to be some way of making it tolerable.

That evening, mind working into overdrive, he took a long time to fall asleep.


	11. Chapter 10

_**A/N - Unbeta'd but I did say Saturday to my reviewers so here you all go... :)**_

"Oh I say!"

Edmund blinked and then smiled awkwardly at the startled she-beaver. He supposed that the way he appeared in Narnia was probably quite alarming to those who witnessed it, certainly it had been alarming enough to experience the first few times, although he was beginning to get used to it now. "I'm sorry," he began tentatively but Mrs Beaver waved his attempt away.

"Not worry dear, no harm done, I was just a little startled to see you. Although, it wasn't half as strange as you vanishing yesterday."

As the she-beaver didn't seem to be particularly upset he declined to press his apology, in fact he was rather glad not to have to as he didn't particularly like having to feel bad for something he couldn't really help.

"Now dear," Mrs Beaver continued, as it became clear Edmund had nothing more to continue, "It seems the witch doesn't know where you are yet, we've seen no sign of her police and if she knew she certainly wouldn't delay in launching an attack, but that's good because it means we've nothing to worry about for now."

"But," Edmund butted in, "What if she does find out? Surely we've got to have a plan!"

The she-beaver looked at him with surprise, "Oh but there's no point in looking for the worst dear, particularly if it hasn't happened yet."

Edmund was struck by a wave of exasperation, but squashed it down and tried to argue rationally. "Yes but… you can't just sit about and hope nothing will go wrong! You need to be active! If you just sit around and hope the witch will leave you alone it's like… like… like if a storm was coming and you decided not to bring an umbrella because it wasn't raining _yet! _You need to think ahead, it's… it's…" Edmund was struggling to effectively vocalise his opinion without letting his emotions, violent as they had been over the past few days and nights, to overcome him. He thought he understood what Mrs Beaver was trying to say, that they didn't have the power to fight the witch so they would just have to hold on to their optimism, but that hardly made it a good idea to just lie down and allow themselves to be oppressed. "Right now," he continued, "You're harbouring a human and that's _against her laws! _So you're a criminal! Surely, you must want some plan to stay safe or get away if you're caught. You can't just sit and hope. I mean it's all well and good to hope but you can't rely on just that, not when everything is so big and out of control and people are getting taken away and…" his eyes were stinging and he shook with barely suppressed emotion, "It…. I…."

"There there dear," Mrs Beaver said, "Let me get you a cup of tea and…"

"I don't _want _a cup of tea! I don't want to pretend that everything is okay and there aren't people being arrested for things that shouldn't be crimes and bombs dropping and an evil witch who'd arrest me as soon as look at me and that I don't _hate _staying in the country and not know if home will even _be _there to go back to and..." his words were hysterical and almost incomprehensible garbled as he reached a crescendo and fell back limply in his chair, trembling with emotion.

A few minutes later, a steaming mug of tea was pressed into his hands and he sipped at it in silence, gazing off out of the small window. Finally, when he'd brought himself back under something resembling control, he glanced over to the she-beaver, feeling a touch guilty about outpouring all of his emotions onto her with very little provocation. He attempted to say sorry but there words caught in his throat and all he managed was a choked gulp and an apologetic look. It appeared to be enough.

"Now then, that's better dear isn't it?" Not quite an I-told-you-so, but the implication was there. "Well I don't know anything about these bombs but I'll tell you now that living under the witch has been horrid for all of us and you're quite right to say that things are getting worse not butter, but looking at the downside of things only ever upsets people. When Mr Beaver gets in from his trip to Badger's," here she affected a look of disapproval, "We'll have a proper talk about what there is to do about you're being in Narnia and the witch, but for now we'll do just fine keeping things ready for him here." Edmund nodded mutely. The she-beaver's words reminded him uncomfortably of the things his mother had told him when his father had enlisted. "Come along then, Mr Beaver will be bringing some fish back with him, so if you get to laying the table now I'll get the stove heating up."

For several moments, Edmund didn't move, his emotional exhaustion affecting his physical state, but finally he dragged himself to his feet, stumbling but then shuffling over to the drawers. It took a few attempts to find the correct location, but he finally acquired a handful of cutlery and placed it (assuming, quite rightly, that Narnians used the same arrangement that was used in England) neatly in front of three of the seats. The simple task was strangely refreshing, something that he could focus his mind on without involving any of his mixed up emotions and shaking them up further. He was far more conscientious about the chore than he usually would be; carefully checking the alignment of each implement to ensure that it was parallel to the others at each place and perpendicular to the seats where appropriate. When his task was completed, he returned to his chair, swirling the dregs of his tea glumly. He lost track of him and was startled when Mrs Beaver said, with the slightest hint of worry, "Really! Whatever could be taking him so long?"

Edmund shrugged, suspecting that the question was rhetorical and unsure how he would have gone about answering were it not.

"Well," Mrs Beaver said, "I suppose I have hemming to be getting on with in the wait," and she sat down at the sewing machine in the corner and set to work. Edmund couldn't claim to know much on the subject of hemming or its value but he admired the spirit of her action. It was that sort of resolute and industrious character which had been placed at the core of the war effort back home, and it was something familiar and strengthening, it helped him to re-energise, the she-beaver's actions proving that there was more to be getting on with than just sitting around feeling sorry for himself.

"Is there anything you'd like me to do... to help out...?" he said, not as firmly as he'd have liked but without his voice shaking either.

Mrs Beaver looked at him with unconcealed surprise for several seconds and then smiled. "Well we might as well get the potatoes done before Mr Beaver get's home. Do you know how to peel potatoes?"

Edmund hesitated. He had attempted the action a few times in England, when helping his mother, but invariably ended up taking more skin off of his own fingers than the potatoes, and eventually his mother had stopped asking him. On this particular occasion though, he decided to focus on the positives.

"Good then," Mrs Beaver said, "The potatoes are in the larder and the peeler is in the drawer."

He nodded and began to give it his best try but when Mrs Beaver looked over the entire state of affairs was rather gory.

"Oh... Oh dear!" she said, leaping from her chair, "Well that won't do. Go wash your hands, there's the trick. Now I thought you'd said you'd done this before?"

"I have," Edmund defended, as he rinsed away the blood, "It's just difficult."

The she-beaver gave him a look of pitying amusement which would normally have caused Edmund to bristle with indignation but on this occasion failed to do more than scratch the surface of the exhausted shame which still hung over him from his earlier outburst.

"Oh now dear, don't look so glum. I thought you were a human not a marshwiggle, it's easy enough to learn, have your hands stopped bleeding yet?" Edmund nodded, deciding to ask about marshwiggles and why on earth they might be relevant to the matters at hand, and Mrs Beaver continued, "Good good. Now come over here and show me how you do it."

Edmund acquiesced, demonstrating his technique of holding the potato by the side and peeling towards himself, and as soon as the point nicked his skin (halfway through the first stroke); he stopped and looked to Mrs Beaver for advice. She smiled kindly at him, "You've got the right idea, but I see the problem. It's like this see, you need to hold it from underneath and peel it away from you." She adjusted his hands and let him try again and this time, while it was still an unpleasant chore, it was considerably less painful. "There you are, now when you've done that side, turn it around. You see... now you have the hang of it. Imagine what else you could master."

Although a touch sceptical of her optimism still, Edmund kept his mouth shut and nodded, continuing with the method as Mrs Beaver returned to her hemming. He finally finished the whole pile (with minimum injury) and returned to his seat where he sat quietly, trying to resist the urge to speculate about Mr Beaver and what could have delayed him and, indeed, if Mr Beaver was any more practically minded than his wife (who was perhaps a little more so than she first seemed but not nearly enough for Edmund's satisfaction.

Edmund understood patience, those long nights in England where the shelter shook from the force of the bombs attested to that, but patience without any intent of action was just irritating to him. He liked the feeling that something was being done.

Finally, when Edmund was beginning to think that he'd go mad from waiting, the door swung open and the beaver he recalled from the previous night entered. "There you are," Mrs Beaver said exasperatedly (never showing a hint that her emotions had tended more towards worried than impatient); "I was beginning to think you'd gotten lost."

Mr Beaver ignored her huffing and, in fact, seemed to be grinning. "Let's get this fish on now," he said, "And I'll tell you who I've been talking to that's delayed me so long."

Edmund, leaning back in his chair, stayed out of the subsequent fussing, but joined the two semi-aquatic mammals at the table for the meal. The fish was delicious, miles better than any he had tasted in England, and one could hardly tell that it had been dead for hours rather than minutes before it had reached the frying pan. Edmund stayed quiet and enjoyed the meal, deciding to let the beaver get to his point in his own good time.

It didn't take long.

"It appears," he said, nodding to Edmund, "That we've nothing to fear from your dwarfish encounter. I just so happened to cross paths with Rorikin as I were walking back from Badger's and he mentioned that his brother, that's Bricklin, has been complaining about the presence of short stubborn humans which wander around in blizzards."

"I'm not short!" Edmund defended instinctively, and then processed the rest of the declaration, "So the dwarf I met was… Bricklin? And his brother is… Rorikin? And they're the ones you said aren't loyal to the witch?"

The Beaver looked at him in surprise, as if either he had not been expecting Edmund to recall the remarks from yesterday, or had thought Edmund wouldn't have been able to put the information together correctly and then nodded. "Precisely, and lucky for you they are, when there's scarce few who've the nerve to be so openly against her. Mostly even the ones who don't like her keep their heads down in fear but those three, Rorikin, Bricklin, and Griggle, those three aren't much bothered by all of her wand-waving and…"

"General unpleasantness," Mrs Beaver cut in quickly, which made Edmund wonder if she didn't suspect that Mr Beaver had been about to say something rather less delicate.

"Yes, general unpleasantness. So anyway, I told him that he'd be best coming down her tomorrow and if you were going to reappear we'd be best sorting things properly, so that's that sorted out."

Edmund nodded, glad and surprised, but also just a little disappointed to have had the challenges he was facing lifted away from him like that. Still, although he enjoyed his meal, his more pessimistic half couldn't help but speculate that the removal of that particular dilemma had merely occurred to create space for more.


	12. Chapter 11

Still drained, but feeling far better for his meal, Edmund helped clear the dishes and then, after a few deep breaths while he worked up the nerve, turned to Mr Beaver and asked, "So if that dwarf, Rorikin, does come tomorrow, and I am here, what then? I mean..." he floundered, trying to find a direction for his query, and then gave up. It seemed like he had so many feelings, fear and exhaustion, determination and desperation and confusion, but most of all, he felt lost, and unsure of the urge he had to act against the witch, despite all logic condemning such actions as foolishness. Still, the worst of the feelings, hunger, had been dealt with so it seemed only appropriate that he ought to confront one of the others.

"Well... well I shan't imagine anything will _happen,_" Mrs Beaver said firmly. "After all you're only young and rather lost. I think it's just that he wants to see that what he's heard is true."

Edmund scowled, then felt a little guilty because the she-beaver had been very kind to him, but turned to Mr Beaver, determined to get an answer that was honest rather than simply reassuring.

"But something must happen. This Rorikin chap wouldn't be so interested if he didn't think there was something which would come of this."

Mr Beaver also appeared not to want to continue this line of conversation but, unlike his wife, seemed to understand that Edmund wouldn't tolerate just being fobbed off.

"Rorikin, while patient, is still a great believer in the idea that us Narnians could rebel and overthrow the witch, even without Cair Paravel's input. For him, the idea of a human in these woods, the very thing the witch is most against, is like a sign. He sees it as proof that there are weaknesses in the witch's defences after all."

"Because he's ridiculous," Mrs Beaver added firmly. "Nobody in their right mind would suggest that you being here was proof that a rebellion could work. Poor Tumnus had the right idea, keeping this whole affair quiet."

There was a silence. Mrs Beaver clearly thought that she had given the last word on the subject but Edmund's mind was whirring. He had spent a sizable time crossing through the woods the previous night and that he hadn't been spotted by any spies, when the witch allegedly had followers everywhere, was either miraculous or a sign that the witch's network was weakening - as the Beaver's claimed Rorikin thought. If he remembered rightly the story he had been told by Mr Tumnus then the witch had been in power for years before Aslan sent the King and Queens, although the faun knew not where from, who had wrested three quarters of the country from her grasp not so long ago. And while the royals were either incapable of or uninterested in taking back the west, that they had reclaimed so much of the country from the witch and her winter was inarguable proof that the witch was beatable. And perhaps that loss could have shaken her hold upon the west. The beavers still believed that the witch was practically impossible to defeat but the dwarf Rorikin clearly thought otherwise. What was to stop others from following the same pattern? Edmund, much to his own surprise, recalled a detail from school: that the first part of breaking something took the most strength. It was a little like a fraying rope. Now the initial cords of the witches hold on the west had been snapped by her defeats in the rest of Narnia, it could only be a matter of time before the rest began to unravel. The beavers had been good to him but Edmund knew that tomorrow, upon meeting Rorikin, it would take a lot to stop him siding with the dwarf.

"I think," he began carefully, not wanting to offend the beavers, "That I should quite like to talk to this Rorikin fellow if he comes," Edmund paused, momentarily losing his thread at the strange ringing which had begun in his ears, "His ideas sound interesting. I don't understand much about what's happening here and I should like to…"

_Breakfast!_

He was struck by a wave of horrid disorientation as he found himself quite suddenly back in his bed in England and suddenly acutely aware of the fact that the ringing he could hear was the bell for breakfast.

Blast it all, he had overslept. Mrs Macready would not like that.

At least, he thought with a hint of a smirk, he was already dressed. He swung himself out of the bed and made a hasty and rather fruitless attempt to smooth the creases out of his clothes. Oh well, if it was noticed that his clothes looked like they had been slept in he was sure it would be interpreted as scruffiness, rather than that he had actually slept fully clothed.

He sprinted down the stairs, fearful that his tardiness might result in him being denied the meal altogether and skidded into the small room where he'd been instructed to take his meals (for the dining room was apparently far too grand for a boy his age).

"I was beginning to think you weren't coming," said the maid, Ivy he recognised, the one who'd offered to post his letter when he'd first arrived.

Edmund shook his head, bounding into the seat, "Sorry… I just… took two tries to tie my shoelaces properly."

It was a weak excuse but Ivy just laughed. "Of course you did. No boy of your age ever wanted five more minutes of sleep if it ran the risk of making him late."

Edmund grinned sheepishly, tucking into his toast.

"And before you go gobbling that down and racing off again, there's a letter on your tray."

Edmund, who had been focused entirely on his food, was momentarily thrown. Why on earth would _he _be getting post? Then he recognised his mother's handwriting on the address.

"Oh…" he said, and then, "Thank you. If I were to write a reply…"

"You might want to walk down to the village and post it yourself. It'll be something to do other than sit in this house. Mind you, you don't want to become too much of an enthusiastic correspondent, stamps are expensive even at the best of times."

Edmund nodded politely but he was ten and far more interested in what interesting news a letter from his mother might contain than the warning of frugality as he, brushing the crumbs carelessly from his fingers, used the butter knife to open the envelope.

_'To my darling Edmund,' _the letter read, in the neat but rather inelegant script he had come to associate with his mother, '_I am glad that you are okay. We are all making the best of things these days but I do think your father would be proud. You must be a good boy for the professor and I am sure that Mrs Macready and the staff are merely trying to do their jobs. You must not be a nuisance. I am sure you will have a lovely time exploring the countryside – you must think of it like a holiday. I'm sure you'll be having far too much fun to remember to write or be homesick but don't worry, you will be home again before you know it,  
Your loving mother.'_

Edmund reread the letter several times and was surprised to find himself a little disappointed. Oh for sure, he was glad to hear from his mother because it went some way to alleviating the constant knot of worry in his chest that her being in London with the bombs brought, but he hadn't missed her, he realised, or at least nowhere near as acutely as he thought he would have. He supposed that it was a combination of the nightly distraction that was Narnia and that, with his father already away fighting, he had rather grown used to the sensation of missing somebody, to the point where it had become normal.

He finished his toast, which was also disappointing, as he contemplated what the letter had said. Rather like the words of Mrs Beaver, it was mostly uninformative and its reassurances not particular convincing. But the words were his mother's, and that was enough.

He folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket, with the map of Narnia, making a mental note to transfer them over to his coat as soon as he had the opportunity. And then made another mental note to ensure that he slept with his coat on, so as to avoid any disastrous incidents such as arriving in Narnia without a map. He yawned as he stacked his dishes, and then again as he was exiting the room. It was strange, despite the fact that he was getting more sleep than he had ever done back in London he didn't feel all that well rested. Certainly, he was sleeping physically but his dreams – for lack of a better term – were so far from restful that he wasn't entirely sure that the drained feeling they left his with could be put down entirely to his emotional and mental fatigue. Still, it was hardly an issue worth fretting over; it would most likely pass in a few days. Anyway, if the view from the windows was anything to go by it was the first truly nice day that there had been since arriving at the Professor's mansion and Edmund had a great deal of serious interest in examining which trees would be best for climbing.

**_A/N – Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out. Writing is has been not unlike getting blood from a stone and real life had only served to hamper me further. Hopefully I can make a better job of writing the next couple of chapters – who knows, I might even get back on schedule enough that I'll have time to show them to my beta reader before I post them. As always feedback is appreciated and to the readers I'm not in direct contact with I'm glad you've been enjoying this story and hope you will continue too._**


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